Blue Button

FINALLY! I am hitting the blue NEW POST button, for the first time in almost 2 weeks! I have missed you, blue button! Part of the reason that blue button and I have not spent any time together in the last couple of weeks was TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES i.e. I broke our camera. But then my amazing husband fixed it! Just fixed it! After I dropped it with the lens open trying to record a video for you all and the lens was all cock-eyed and I was convinced we would have to buy a new camera and after I went through the stages of loss: denial when I texted J at work and told him I broke the camera and was giggling about it, anger when he got home and I realized that I actually really broke it good and this was reality and not a funny story I was texting him about my day, bargaining when I delusionally thought that I myself could maybe fix it, and depression when I started researching repair costs and new camera costs and realized we may not even be able to find the same camera (which I quite love). I hadn't quite reached the acceptance stage yet when J actually fixed the camera! I found a website on fixing a lens broken in just that manner but remained convinced that our particular case was beyond repair (pun intended) and then he adjusted it in like two seconds and voila! Clear, concise photos once again. Thank you J! My hero and all of that. (I may be saying that facetiously, but it's really true - he is heroic on a daily basis.)

I should take a moment here and publicly acknowledge my love of the run-on sentence. I'm sure you had your suspicions after reading the above paragraph. It's true - I relish the comma, the dash, the parenthesis and any other punctuation that allows me to indulge every angle of my thoughts, and I am not ashamed. Run-on. Run-on. Run-on.

And now, drumroll please, the blog I have been waiting 2 weeks to post:

If you have ever wondered what J's (heroic) bottom looks like, here you go - it looks exactly like this:

The first moment I saw BB's bottom, I knew I had seen it somewhere before-I recognized it! Like father, like son. (And that flat little thing certainly bears no resemblance to the junk in my trunk, for those of you who are wondering).

What's That You Say?

Why, yes, he is the cutest baby in the world, thank you for noticing

Treegazing

J and I decided it was time to introduce BB to nature (besides that whole birth thing), and since it's 100+ degrees outside in Tucson, we escaped up to Mount Lemmon for a day. This was our first long car trip with BB, and BB was a great traveler, slept the way up and coo-ed the way down! We enjoyed the cooler weather, eating pizza on a patio, and trying to point out the tall green trees to BB who was rather oblivious to the great outdoors. After lunch we headed to Rose Canyon for a walk around the lake. BB was fast asleep in his carrier for most of our walk, so J and I resigned ourselves to the fact that BB was not impressed with the outdoors and just enjoyed the scenery and cool air (and being outside without plotting an escape to the nearest air conditioned building).



Once we had our fill of the lake (and noticed the foreboding dark clouds gathering overhead), we started heading the direction of the car. While we strolled back BB woke up and all of the sudden he starting looking around, noticing these tall green and brown things he did not recognize! His eyes were wide while he absorbed this new landscape, learning more about the world around him "Oh, so air is sometimes cool? And what are these skinny, still things with feathers towards the top?" Of course, merely minutes after BB became aware of his surroundings, we felt raindrops on our head and had to scurry back to the car to avoid the oncoming downpour, but not before we snapped a photo of BB treegazing.

Blue

Still so blue!

Backyard-again-s

The day after my birthday was a bittersweet one - we got to spend the day with some of our best friends, but at the end had to say goodbye again, to some for longer than others! C+A+little C live in Phoenix now and were in town for the day, and S+H were leaving Tucson to head into missionary training. We had an emotional send off for S+H at church, and then spent the day hanging out at our place, giving BB a chance to spend some time with his best friend, little C. Here's BB with little C and the mommies:

C+A+little C beat us home from church and C noticed the utter neglect our lawn has suffered of late and decided to mow our lawn for us! What a wonderful surprise and blessing this was. C, you really are our Best Man! J headed out to help C and the men ended up fixing our entire irrigation system (without digging up the whole backyard like J thought we would have to). Just a few days later there are already little green grass blades growing again! Thank you C and S and Mr. P!

While putting the lawnmower back in place, C moved the lawnmower platform and what did he find? Two little mice sitting in a nest of torn cardboard - that little mouse I had seen apparently had a wife and plans for a happily ever after right in our backyard! Unfortunately for Mickey and Minnie, C + J bought them some "special powerbars" at Home Depot, and I don't think we'll be seeing them again.

First Mommy Birthday

My first birthday as a mommy was this past weekend, and it was one of the best birthdays yet! It started with BB's very special birthday present to me - a full night's sleep! That's right, BB slept through the night for the first time, WOOHOO! (And has for several more nights since!!) J woke up and said "Did you get up last night?" and I said "No...why, what time is it?" J said, "Six!"

After I fed BB and J and I processed the initial shock at our baby's newest milestone, I decided to go for a run - I checked our outdoor thermostat and it said 72.5 degrees and I thought, this thing must be broken. I went and opened the garage door, and lo and behold, cool 72.5 degree air came rushing in the garage! I ran farther and longer than I had been running, fueled by my full night's sleep and the amazing weather (my birthday gift from the Lord!). I then met some girls for breakfast at Good Egg, one of my favorite restaurants. We had a great time passing BB around, telling first kiss stories, and I even got a candle in my cinnamon roll! Thanks R for planning a wonderful birthday breakfast!

After breakfast I came home, napped, and then opened some gifts - J got me an amazing kitchen knife set so we spent the next hour chopping things with our new and old knives like we were on an infomercial. Then J and I played each other in Jeopardy (our new favorite activity - we record the episodes and then play against each other). We finished off the night at Melting Pot - YUM! BB did great at the restaurant and I got what I wanted the most for my birthday - a relaxing day with my little family. It was a very happy birthday.

Hiccups

Have I told you that BB often gets the hiccups when he's tired? It's true! I swear! I noticed it pretty early but thought it was a fluke, but 10 weeks later I think it's fair to say I have noticed the trend. Eat, awake, smiley, hiccups, fuss, naptime!

Breakfast at Mommy's

BB was more interested in "talking" and smiling than eating breakfast this morning, which was just fine with Mommy, because I finally caught a smile on camera:

(It's hard to capture just how great his smile is on film, but this can give you a little idea)

He Can Picture It Now

Down in the nursery at church this past Sunday someone said that it's recommended that you read your child six books a day. I looked down at BB and saw a future of illiteracy due to his parent's neglect to read him more than a book or two a day in the first two months of life.

Since then I have been attempting to instill the 6-book-a-day habit and in the last few days of increased reading, BB has become very interested in the pictures in the books that we are reading him. He is really looking at them!!
Here's a photo of Daddy reading to BB and BB checking out the illustrations:


Other good news about BB is that for the past couple of weeks I am able to lay him down still awake at naptime, and within minutes he falls asleep, no fussing. It's SO NICE!!
Here's BB being cute in his whale hat towel after a bath a few days ago:

Backyardigans

When you live in the desert and you have a house built, there are natural consequences. Granted, the land our development is on was formerly a golf course (which is why we found several buried golf balls when doing the backyard!), but there was still going to be some wildlife to deal with. I had been ardently opposed to exterminating said wildlife (bugs) and preferred to set them free (take them outdoors). I felt that we had settled on their land, and our hostile takeover left them otherwise homeless. While reasoning with J about this, I told him it reminded me of when the colonists settled in America and the Native Americans were left to....? and finally by appealing to J's love of American history he agreed not to exterminate the bugs.

Two-and-a-half years later, it's monsoon season and there are crickets. everywhere. In the beginning it was just an occasional cricket - I was taught crickets are good luck, and they just didn't bother me that much, so we maintained the "set them free" rule (and I just ignored them). However, the crickets have gotten to an un-ignorable point and now that BB is in the picture, it grosses me out to think of them crawling all over his stuff. So sadly on the agenda today was "J exterminate crickets". After my workout this morning I got a surge of energy to finally sweep off the (sorely neglected) front and back porches, where there were LOTS of tiny black dots that J informed me was cricket poo. So I swept. And then I decided to do some other bits of outdoor work, like destroy the bunches of spiderwebs on our back porch, which led me over to our tarped patio furniture. One of the tarps had been strewn to the ground by the monsoon wind some time ago, and J and I just hadn't gotten around to putting it back on the furniture. Now, I have a huge fear of snakes and everytime those tarps are piled up somewhere I am terrified that a giant snake is going to jump out at me, so I lifted up the tarp with a broom, very hesitantly, and what did I see? A little mouse scamper under our patio furniture! I screamed and J came to the window to find out what all the fuss was about. I told him and then he saw the mouse for himself, skimming across our pavers and around the corner by the AC unit. I thought, problem solved, but J was very annoyed, and I wasn't sure why. And then J told me that the mouse might eat parts of our house and get into our walls! What?! I had no idea that's what mice did.

A few minutes later I was still destroying spiderwebs with my broom, and I went over by the AC unit to finish the job (and look for signs of the mouse). No mouse in sight, but I did see the tarp that covers the lawn mower lying on the ground, so I rustled it a little with the broom and then decided that J could take care of that one. I went to tell him so and that I am always terrified of a snake popping out from under the tarps, and he pointed out "Well, if we have a mouse, we don't have a snake," and then after a second he continued, "Actually, mice eat crickets..." and left me to realize that this mouse is the result of my cricket love. My response: "Fine. I already told you. Do whatever you need to do." So J is now in charge of finding some sort of cricket-mouse hybrid exterminator so that our house doesn't just crumble to the ground with mouse-munch holes in the walls like pieces of swiss cheese, weighed down by cricket poo.

In case this story has not already illustrated this for you, our yards have been badly neglected since BB was born, and maybe even a little before, as I was the one who did a lot of the weeding and once my abdomen was the size of a watermelon it was difficult to do much bending over. And the monsoons, while I love the rain, certainly have not helped us - they are definitely playing on the weed's team. In fact, at this point, I wouldn't really say we need to mow the lawn anymore, it's more like we need to harvest the lawn.